The Hunger Games short stories
by Kiha
Summary: Short stories about The Hunger Games characters. How did Johanna Mason win her Games? What was it like for Finnick to be a mentor for Annie? Everything we don't read in the books.
1. Johanna Mason: From tribute to victor

**Johanna Mason - How a tribute becomes a victor**

The moment her axe hits his skull she knows two things. One: there is an existing possibility she could come out of here alive. And two: her stupid act is over. No more weak girl, no more pretending to cry or pretending to be afraid. Never.

The canon fires the moment the pieces of his brain spatter on her face and his blood tastes in her mouth. The Career drops on his knees, his back still turned to her, and collapses forward on his face. But the look on the face of the last person standing in her way to freedom is priceless.  
The girl, her blonde hair turned red from the blood of this final fight between them three, shrieks and pulls the last knife she owns from her belt, but it's too late. Before the weak, crying girl from district seven slashes the axe through her throat, she realizes how much everybody had underestimated her. District seven was no weakling, no scared little girl hiding away in the trees of the forest of this Games. No, district seven was an actress, a fighter and above all she had now proven to have a wicked ability to murder.

When the axe separates the head from the body of this last girl, a final canon fires, but the victor remains motionless. It's not until the voice of Claudius Templesmith booms through the arena when the last person standing drops the bloody axe to the ground and falls down on her knees. It's not until his voice starts talking before she actually believes she has survived. And right at that moment already, she knows how she will never be able to live anymore.

That is the moment a tribute becomes a victor.

She listens to the final words of Claudius Templesmith and looks up at the sky of the arena, seeing a hovercraft appear above her, but knows she will never be able to leave the arena.

"Ladies and gentleman, may I present you the victor of the seventy-second Hunger Games, Johanna Mason!"

And the moment the hovercraft lifts her up and takes her aboard, that is the moment the real Games are about to begin.


	2. Finnick Odair: The Games of Annie

**Finnick Odair - The Games of Annie**

I gave her up long before the end of these Games. It was hard enough to see her go, to see her struggle for survival, but it was even harder to see her lose her mind.

The moment she witnessed the decapitation of her district partner, the boy that was even younger than she was, even more innocent, in that moment I could see it in her eyes: emptiness, with a touch of crazy. In that moment, she had lost her true self and the Games had taken not only me, not only the boy laying bloody between the trees, not only all the hundreds of other tributes that were here before us, they had taken her as well, my Annie.

I lost my last piece of dignity together with her last piece of mind. I was only young back then, my Games were not that long ago, and being a mentor was getting too hard already, almost unbearable. I screamed and kicked and hit and destroyed fancy Capitol computers and scoffed on even fancier Capitol employees. It was too hard, inhuman, to see all those people I just befriended die in the most horrible ways you could imagine, but it was even harder to see my one and only love lose her mind.

President Snow came to personally warn me, I had to be the person I always was, the person everybody liked and everybody was used to. A slave to the Capitol. There was nothing more I could do than listen to him, because else it would have meant the end of Annie and probably every other tribute from my district. So I listened. And I watched.  
I watched Annie die, little by little, until she could do nothing more than sit in a tree to wait for her physical end. I suffered with her. I could scream, I could almost jump through that screen to get to her, but I wanted her to die on her own terms, not that of President Snow.  
Sponsors were scarce, but she did not eat anyway.  
Other tributes never came looking for her. She had had a meltdown and somehow, everybody seemed to know and nobody could bring up the power to search her and kill her. To finish her suffering.

She had nightmares in her sleep and often woke up kicking and screaming and sweating. Sometimes she said my name, but then it was never more than barely a whisper. Seeing her slowly die was worse than dreaming of all the faces of tributes I had killed. Her dying was so slow, so agonizing.

Then the flood came and tributes started to drown.  
The flood was not that strong, but it was high and there was no place to stay in touch with the ground. The districts left in these Games, were districts without a lot of water around. No seas or rivers, never an opportunity to swim.

But Annie, she swam.  
A little of the life left in her came back in that water. And she swam. She swam for such a long time that everybody else drowned. And she survived. Poor, little Annie survived.

At first I was euphoric. She had won, I could have her back and we could start building our lives back up in district four.  
Soon, I found out things would never be the same.

She was mentally broken. Her eyes kept seeing things from the past, dying tributes and decapitated bodies, but they never saw the present. Sometimes she would sit on the beach for hours, sometimes perfectly still, sometimes sobbing like a baby. Sometimes she wouldn't eat and sometimes she wouldn't shower, because the water reminded her of things I did not see.  
My Annie never came back, she was still in that arena, still locked up in her Games and it would take her a long time to return, if she would return at all.

So I watched Annie die again, little by little, until only her physical remains were left.  
It was then I realized it would have been better for her to die in the Games, so that she would never had to return to replay the scenes over and over again in her head.  
I realized President Snow could have let her die back then.

I realized keeping her alive was only a way for President Snow to keep me in place. So that there would always be a way to suffer. So that there would always be a way to be reminded that it is not me who is in charge of my own life. Always a way to be reminded the Capitol is there.

Annie.  
Poor, little Annie.


	3. The reaping in district 11

**The reaping in district 11**

District eleven is too large to have every citizen waiting on the square for the reaping, so people are obliged to watch on the small television screens in their houses. The children between twelve and eighteen years old must be on the square, hearing the propaganda of the Capitol and waiting for a possible death sentence, while their parents are at home hoping they will see them return for dinner.  
So that is way today the whole square is filled with nervous and neatly dressed children, that is way there is camera crew on the stage in front of them, preparing for the big moment that will be seen throughout the whole of Panem. That is why a weirdly dressed woman is hopping around the stage and claps her hands excitedly, because she will be seen in the most popular live television show in the history of this country; a fight to death between twenty-four innocents.

That is why there are hundreds of children on the square, but it is still death silent.

They all have dark skins and even darker hair. In the front they are all young, in the back they are older, but still kids, and everybody is nervous and scared.

The Capitol-woman steps to the front of the stage and claps her hands to get the attention, but it is an unnecessary movement, because everyone's eyes are already fixed on her. Her dazzling outfit seems out of place, to be honest, everything seems out of place.  
They show a propaganda movie about the Capitol, about the Games and why they are being held. Then the woman coughs and smiles brilliantly, genuinely happy.

"So first things first," she cheers, "lets pick one lucky girl and one lucky who can be a part of the country's history!" She waits for applause, but of course doesn't get it. Then she picks a boy's name: Tresh. The boy is enormous and his muscles extend from under his shirt, but his eyes show the tiniest bit of fear.  
"Who is this lovely young man?" the woman tries, but he looks at her as if he is thinking of ways to kill her in the most brutal way, so she shuts up after a short and nervous laugh.

Then she hops over to the other bowl with names and grips the first piece of paper she gets a hold on. She opens it and smiles and calls a name, and a small, tiny girl approaches the stage.  
Next to Tresh, this looks ridiculous. She is the total opposite of her district partner tribute, except for her eyes; her eyes are fierce and full of life and hopes. If she is having any fears, she is hiding it pretty damn well.

"And gorgeous, are you proud to be representing your district?" the woman asks her.  
The girl's eyes flash a moment, seemingly with anger, before she smiles and nods shyly.

The truth is this: the girl, whose name was Rue, was not fearless and fierce and hopeful at all. She was very smart though and she knew right away, right at that moment the woman had called her name, that she would be dead soon. But living in this district was a long way of dying and now she would go the short way.

The truth is that the weakest players always have a hidden strength, while the best players always show certain fatal flaws.


End file.
